The emotional labour of boundary spanning

Abstract

PurposeWithin public services there is a widely recognised role for workers who operate across organisational and professional boundaries. Much of this literature focusses on the organisational implications rather than on how boundary spanners engage with citizens. An increased number of public service roles require boundary spanning to support citizens with cross-cutting issues. The purpose of this paper is to explicate the emotional labour within the interactions that boundary spanners have with citizens, requiring adherence to display rules and building trust.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper which draws on illustrative examples to draw out the emotional labour within two types of boundary spanning: explicit and emergent.FindingsEmotional labour theory offers a way to classify these interactions as requiring high, medium or low degrees of emotional labour. Boundary spanning theory contributes an understanding of how emotional labour is likely to be differently experienced depending on whether the boundary spanning is an explicit part of the job, or an emergent property.Originality/valueDrawing on examples from public service work in a range of advanced democracies, the authors make a theoretical argument, suggesting that a more complete view of boundary spanning must account for individual-level affect and demands upon workers. Such a focus captures the “how” of the boundary spanning public encounter, and not just the institutional, political and organisational dimensions examined in most boundary spanning literatures.

Public Servants in the Wild: An Introduction

“…These practitioners sometimes occupy traditional professional roles (e.g., nurses, social workers), but often they are boundary spanners, explicitly positioned in cross-organizational roles (Sullivan and Skelcher 2002;Williams 2012). Increasingly, people are appointed to posts such as care coordinators, navigators, and brokers, with more freedom to operate but less professional authority than traditional street-level bureaucrats (Needham et al 2017).…”

Social movements and boundary work in arts, health and wellbeing: A research agenda

“…Boundary workers can experience ambiguity in their roles, which are easily defined as peripheral, that can lead to conflicts and difficulties (Aungst et al, 2012;Akkerman & Bakker, 2011). Boundary work can be highly rewarding but can also lead to stress and burnout, and the concept of emotional labour, derived from Hochschild's 1983 study of flight attendants (Hochschild, 1983) has been applied to boundary work (Caldwell & O'Reilly, 1982;Needham, Mastracci & Mangan, 2017). To date, relatively little attention has been paid to the emotional impacts of health and wellbeing work on artists and practitioners.…”

Emotional labour in non-governmental organisations: narrative analysis and theory expansion

“…Individuals following display rules can take one of two approaches: They can convince themselves that the display rules are objectively right and true (deep acting) or they can fake it (surface acting). Surface acting is more stressful and produces more negative outcomes than deep acting (Lu and Guy, 2014;Needham et al, 2017). Furthermore, display rules to suppress negative emotional expression, (e.g., anger, boredom, disgust) -whether performed through surface or deep acting -increase exhaustion (van Gelderen et al, 2011).…”